Inpd

So I got serious about losing weight 2 years ago when my blood work showed some disturbing signs.

AC1 was 5.7 (borderline diabetic)
LDL was 184
HDL was only 42 (good cholesterol)
Total Cholesterol 248 (norm is <200)
Triglycerides were 105 (which was okay)

So I lost 60+ pounds. Went into get my blood work last week. Results came back with:

AC1 was stil 5.7!
LDL dropped to 152
HDL was still 42
Total Cholesterol dropped marginally to 218
Triglycerides increased to 130

So it looks like all that weight lost had minimal effect on the very reason I tried to lose all the weight. My doctor suggested that loosing weight would fix a lot of these issues but I guess not.

Zweivoss

Sorry, but you need to change your diet. Weight loss can help, but I'm fairly certain it will never fix it.
I'm in kind of the same boat as you, borderline type 2, lost about 60 pounds from my starting weight at this point. My AC1 has gone as high as 6.1.
My problem is my diet though. I'm supposed to cut out as many carbs as possible while eating a ton of protein. (Because your body will start breaking your muscles down for sugar as some point. So you need to work to maintain muscle mass.)
Hopefully you don't have have tastebuds as broken as mine, in that case it should be easier for you. (I find about 70% of foods to taste like literal garbage. I'm using the term literally correct here as well.)

2manybikes

How much do you weigh now?

Inpd

At the first weight in I was about 250 now I'm about 180 so I actually lost 70 pounds. I'm now about 5-10 pounds away from my HS weight.

2manybikes

That sounds pretty healthy to me. Been at this weight a long time?

Inpd

I dropped to 205 quickly and have been slowly going down to 180 for the last 8 months.

So why would my test results not change despite a 70+ pound weight loss? My Diet is pretty good (a major reason why I lost al the weight).

indyfabz

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't believe it's rare to be "thin" and still have high cholesterol levels. Put another way, you can adopt a diet combined with an exercise regimen that allows you to lose weight but still results in you having high cholesterol. Maybe it's genetics. I work with a guy who has a family history of high cholesterol. While he doesn't really exercise, he's not sedentary and is a healthy weight. He also eats a low cholesterol diet and, I believe, takes medication, but he still has pretty high cholesterol levels.

bassjones

What does your nutrition look like - specifics. What is your genetic history?

bassjones

Low-cholesterol (or high-cholesterol) diets actually contribute little to nothing to cholesterol levels. If anything, new studies are showing high cholesterol diets are actually good for us. Eat your eggs. Use real butter. Stay away from "low fat" labeled processed food.

Inpd

Good point. But what about the AC1 number. Weight is the number one driver of Diabetes and my weight loss didn't effect my AC1 number at all.

indyfabz

I don't follow any particular diet and eat very little processed foods, period. That diet includes very little butter and eggs, simply because they don't fit in with most of what I like to eat, (The carton of eggs in our frig has been there for at least a month. Maybe even more than two months. We usually make dinner salads once a week that include a hard boiled egg each.), although I do enjoy a good omelet every once in a while. My total cholesterol has never tested above 184, and my ratio is always insanely good. But I will say that when I was a broke law school student and couldn't afford the "finer things in life," food or otherwise, my total cholesterol was a shocking 119 when I had it checked as part of a physical for a summer job. The company doctor told me if it had been much lower it would have raised concerns about liver disease. My total cholesterol level has definitely increased with my economic status. Maybe I should quit my job so I can live longer.

indyfabz

Maybe you have strong No. 2s and 3s, whatever they may be.

Inpd

AC1 is a test for diabetes. 5.6 - 6.4 is considered pre-diabetes testing consistently above 6.4 and your diabetic.

indyfabz

You said weight is the No. 1 driver of diabetes. What I meant was that, in your case, maybe the No. 2 and No. 3 drivers are at work. (Smoking is the No. cause of lung cancer. IIRC, exposure to radon gas is No. 2.) Maybe you have something else going on that is raising your A1C. In sum, if there is more than one factor, simply eliminating one of them doesn't eliminate that possibility.

CliffordK

Do you exercise regularly? Cycle commute?

I believe that regular exercise is supposed to be related to HDL levels, although one shouldn't expect huge shifts.

ColaJacket

#2 would probably be eating foods with a high glycemic index. Which includes simple carbs (e.g. bread, cake, cookies, candy, etc.). But it also includes some fruits and vegetables (e.g. bananas, beans, potatoes, corn, etc.). So even if your eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, if you're eating bananas, beans, potatoes, and corn, then you're still spiking your glycemic index.

#3 would probably be genetics, and you may have to get down or under your suggested BMI numbers, and eat extra healthy to prevent it.

GH

Black wallnut 

How many hours a week do you exercise? Are any of those hours at a high intensity? Good health is related to physical fitness and activity. Weight is controlled or not by diet. The two are linked but not as much as some claim.

Diabetes is genetic. Not all fat people have it, many skinny people have it.

Null66

uhm, loosing weight will improve blood lipids. Remember that 70lbs of fat had to be metabolized. It will take a while for those numbers to respond accordingly.

Also it has been shown that high insulin response foods drive up LDL. So what helps you AC1, will also help LDL. Stay away from high insulin response foods.

Null66

It has been shown that beans have a nearly flat insulin response as does most whole fruits. It's where Glycemic index model breaks down. The Insulin Response is a better metric as it measures INSULIN RESPONSE. The glycemic index is measured by how it burns in a flame. Close, and works for most foods, but critically flawed when it comes to some (mostly natural state) foods.

ColaJacket

That may be true, but when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, there were certain fruits and vegetables that counted as carbs, so I was advised to stay away from them, or count them as carbs.

This was from my doctor, and from information from the American Diabetes Association.

GH

Inpd

Thanks for all the great responses. Heres some more information:

Diet: I eat a low carb high vegetable low meat diet. That's one way I lost a lot of weight by eatings lots of filling but caloric poor (relative to weight) food likes broccoli, Cauliflower etc.

Exercise: I do 2 times 45 minutes of sprinting a week (i.e. 17+mph) and 2 times 2 hour rides at 15mph at least. Some weeks I'll do double that.

History: I don't smoke and drink socially. Diabetes does run in my family but only when we are very overweight (i.e. no skinny diabetics in our family).

Thanks again. But this resulted really deflated me immensely.

79pmooney

Interesting and thanks. I have noticed that some foods I have been eating for decades and sense no "spiking" from are high glycemic foods. So I have paid little attention to that index and just stuck to what my gut tells me.

How does honey fare for insulin response? I get very little of the rise and crash I see from white sugar (sucrose) when I eat it.

Ben

Harvieu25

Type 2 Diabetes is a lipid disorder, not a sugar/carb disorder. Eat a low fat diet (no meat or dairy) and your A1C as well as your cholesterol will come down.

Null66

It may be from a doctor, but it is incorrect.

Many times they get the best results by grossly over simplifying complex phenomenon. Metabolism is far more complicated then a 7 minute presentation and a leaflet can or should try to convey.

Most people don't read, let alone study.
Even if their life depended on it.

If you were a doctor, what would you present. A general rule OR a general rule with 100 exceptions...

If you wish, you can google insulin response curve, it has been studied for quite a few foods. But the test is rather expensive so no where near as much GI which is much cheaper test and mostly right. Please filter out all the bogus "information" and consider properly designed studies, preferably replicated.

I was insulin resistant. Would fall asleep after almost every lunch. Doctor says to "eat normally" now... But I'm still carb phobic, even after what 3 years after reversing insulin resistance.


Did they talk about timing? The state your body is in dramatically effects your insulin response. One of the best things is to take a walk after eating. Double blinds show it blunts the insulin release relative to same meal but no walk.

79pmooney

OP, a book you may want to look at is "The Omega 3 Diet" by Artemis Simopoulos. My doc ordered me to read it when my overall was over 250. Following the book (and radically changing my diet) it came down to around 200. He still put me on statins which brought it down to ~155. (For me, it has never been a weight issue. I have never weighed more than 20 pounds over my racing weight when I was a greyhound (well - not speedwise!).

Ben